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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28893372">Refusal</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollowsbest/pseuds/hollowsbest'>hollowsbest</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Consequences [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work, The Weathervane Journal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(&amp; Mistakes), Character Study, Dredging Up Past Trauma, F/F, Panic Attack, The Open Maw (The Bloated King), unreality</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 09:22:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,765</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28893372</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollowsbest/pseuds/hollowsbest</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A glass path stretches before her with a swirling red fog at either edge. It tries to entice her in, for who knows what goals.  <br/>She ignores its urgings, and keeps walking.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jasper Heaton/India Akrett, Original Female Character/Original Female Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Consequences [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2043850</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Refusal</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You find yourself on a road paved with glass, your boots causing dull clinking as you walk. There’s a soft glow beneath the circular tiling, it ebbs and flows as you pass over it, like some sort of liquid.<br/>
You’d stop and take a closer look, but an unsettled feeling in your gut wards you away. You don’t think you want to know what’s causing the light. <strike>Yet you already do. </strike></p><p>You keep walking, trying to make out anything on either side of the road. All you see is a deep fog, only thinning on this path you now walk. It’s tinged a deep, enticing red; you’re careful to not stray from the now familiar clinking of the glass.<br/>
The glass itself is a little odd, slightly concave and ridged around its edge. It’s not difficult to walk on with your boots, but it’s just <em>weird</em>. Not the sort of thing you’d expect a road to be made of.</p><p>You keep walking, feeling as if you’re going nowhere as the surroundings stay stubbornly identical to the last swirl of fog. You keep yourself grounded with the sound of your footsteps and the weight of your jacket, a solid piece of black leather wrapping around you and offering slight protection against- Against what? You try to grasp at the thought but it slips away from you like the fog.</p><p>You shiver, the fog growing thicker and more oppressive around you. Soon you can barely see your feet, let alone a foot in front of you. It feels heavy in your throat as you breathe it in, but it’s not cold, it’s <em>warm</em>. Like the fog is <em>alive.</em> Like it’s <em>breathing</em>.<br/>
The thought makes you shudder, pulling your jacket tighter around your shoulders. You start moving faster, the dull clinking turning to the cracking of glass as your feet hit the ground harder and faster. You need to find the <em>end</em> of this fog.</p><p>Something shifts against your back, under your jacket, under your <em>shirt</em>. Wet and <em>meaty</em>. It retreats as your feet pound against the glass road, all you can hear is the splintering and cracking as the fog obscures everything. All you can see is the deep red of the fog, and all you can hear are the sound of your footsteps against glass.</p><p>You know logically, running is the worst possible thing you could do in fog this thick. Who knows what you could run into?<br/>
What you could<br/>
                           trip<br/>
<em>                                    over.</em></p><p>You go down hard, hands and elbows not hitting glass and concrete road, but soft dirt. You roll with your momentum, ending up on your side and as you squint at your hands and arms, covered in dirt. You breathe in the musty smell of soil, a welcome change from the humid overpowering fog. Which, as you raise your head and hoist yourself up, appears to be thinning. Not enough to see any sort of horizon, but enough to see your hands, and the dirt you’re sprawled on.</p><p>There’s no sign of the path behind you.</p><p>You push yourself up to sit, brushing dirt off and breathing deep and slow to calm yourself down. You’re better than a frightened child, you’ve dealt with worse than shitty humid fog and weird things <em>touching </em>you.<br/>
But, the terror lingers. You pull your jacket close again, pulling on it to force the fabric firmly against your flesh. Affirming its solidity, affirming <em>your</em> solidity. You kneel there in the dirt, running your fingers over the fabric of your jacket, staring out into the fog surrounding you.</p><p>Your heartbeat slows, your breathing calms, you allow the tension you’d collected to drain as you lean back against your heels. You keep watching the fog, straining to see or hear <em>anything</em>.</p><p>Eventually you stand, all you’ve heard is your breathing- and that unsettles you far more than hearing or seeing something in the fog. You finally allow your eyes to drift from the fog as you brush dirt off your pants, barely registering the red of your jacket as you do. The colour slips through your mind as being <em>right</em>, what other shade would you wear?</p><p>
  <strike>A small part of you, absolutely miniscule and not worth listening to, <em>challenges</em> this thought.</strike><br/>
<br/>
<strike></strike>
</p><p>You turn back towards the glass path, or where you think it was. You’re not sure what direction you came from anymore, there isn’t even a skidmark in the dirt that could orient you. There isn’t anything you can do but pick a direction and walk.<br/>
You eye the fog with trepidation, you have no option but to walk into it, if you want to leave…</p><p>The fog parts as you step forward, widening into a corridor lined with dirt and walled by fog. It’s narrower than the glass road, some might call it a little claustrophobic, but you can’t bring yourself to care. You still can’t see all that far into the fog.<br/>
You walk on, dirt crunching and your breathing being the only audible sounds. You prefer it over the glass by a mile, <strike>sounds like <strong>home</strong>.</strike></p><p>Obviously the dirt is the best path to take, you can’t remember why you’d wanted to stay walking on glass in the first place. All it had gotten you was… The thought slips through your grasp. Was what? Trying to push the thought further only nets you a feeling of <em>warmth</em>.</p><p>Your back beginning to itch drags you from your musings. You absently scratch at it over your jacket, something must’ve bitten you. There’s swelling.<br/>
Something tells you <em><strong>not</strong></em> to worry. There’s plenty more things to worry about at the time being. <strike>(Though you’re not sure what.)</strike> Your back keeps itching. You keep walking.</p><p>You’re not sure when it happens, it feels like you blink and you’re standing in front of it. It doesn’t feel like it slowly came out of the fog as you walked, revealing itself slow and steady. You feel as if it just appeared, between one lapse of concentration and the next as your eyes struggled to focus on the ever-swirling red of the fog.<br/>
<strike>It fills you with dread.</strike> It fills you with <em><strong>hunger</strong></em>.</p><p>It draws you forward, step after step after step until you’re close enough to <em>touch it</em>. You trail a hand on the wood. Your gaze turns towards the chair behind it, plush and <em>red</em>. You start to smile, reaching for it. It feels like- It feels <em>like</em>- <strong><strike>home</strike></strong>. Your thoughts stutter, your beginning steps faltering.</p><p>This is <em><strike>wrong</strike></em>. You can’t- You <em>won’t</em>-</p><p>You <em><strong>refuse</strong></em>.</p><p>You rip yourself away from the desk, and all that it wants of you. The terror that had slowly faded almost engulfing you as it rages back to the forefront of your mind. You grip at your jacket to ground yourself, fingers running over fabric and <em>recoiling</em>. You yank it off you, overwhelmed by the <em>wrong wrong <strong>wrong</strong></em>. You throw it into the fog and out of sight.</p><p>With the loss of your jacket, your <em>real</em> jacket, made of black leather and still somehow smelling of your aunt’s cologne, you feel exposed. You don’t even know when you lost it, you can’t <em>remember</em>. <strike>(There’s a lot of things you can’t remember.)</strike></p><p>Your back itches, almost beginning to ache. You ignore it.<br/>
You need to get away from this <em>desk</em>.</p><p>You take a few steps backwards before turning to head back to the circular clearing. Hoping to perhaps make your way back to the glass. All you find is a wall. A flat plane of fog. Like it was cut and inserted behind you so you couldn’t- <em>wouldn’t</em> turn back. It feels hauntingly familiar, yet not. <strike>You’ve been through a maze like this before.</strike></p><p>You snarl, as if that’d stop you. <strike>You’ll dig through the dirt if you have to.<br/>
</strike>The fog engulfs you once more, you stride forward, pulling your shirt up over your nose to try to curb the heaviness from the air. You can’t tell if it helps.<br/>
You just need to make it back to the glass and off the dirt, you can’t fathom how you thought this was better. It crunches under your feet, echoing in the fog.</p><p>...<em>Fog doesn’t echo-!</em></p><p>Pain bursts through your back, your thoughts scatter as you crumple. Hands slamming into the dirt, unable to process anything but the <em>r i p p i n g</em>.<br/>
Your breath comes in short gasps, until it doesn’t.<br/>
Cloth wraps itself around your face, around your shoulders. Something<em> thick</em> and <em>wet</em> wraps itself around your body, beginning to <em>s q u e e z e</em>.</p><p><em>You can’t</em> <em><strong>breathe</strong></em>.</p><p>
  <em>You can’t <strong>move</strong>.</em>
</p><p>Something calls your name through the fog as you try to rip the fabric from your face, clawing desperately at it while you still can. You can hear whatever it is getting closer, if you had half a brain to spare, you’d say it sounded familiar.<br/>
But you don’t. You’re losing yourself from lack of air, movements uncoordinated, your face aching from the pressure.<br/>
Something wraps itself around your face for the final time, forcing your eyes shut.<br/>
But you can still hear.</p><p>“<strong>JASPER!</strong>”</p><p>Your eyes fly open.<br/>
You force yourself <em>up</em> and <em>away</em>, gulping down air as your eyes dash around the room you’ve found yourself in after wedging yourself in a corner.<br/>
Your eyes lock on the only figure with you, an orange demon. She looks worried, more than worried even. She sits on the bed, hands held out placatingly, her mouth is moving. Fuck. You haven’t been listening.</p><p>“-just had a bad dream. It’s okay Jasper, I’m not going to hurt you.” She says as her brow creases, “You’re safe here.”<br/>
She continues on with similar platitudes, <em>promises</em>. All you can do is watch her until your heart slows from its galloping pace, until you’re no longer gulping air down, until you can <em>recognise her</em>.</p><p>“<em>India</em>.” Your voice breaks, you don’t know how long you’ve stayed lodged in a corner, how long she’s been calming you. With how your back aches, you don’t think you want to know. You drag yourself away from the comforting wall at your back, practically crawling back into bed, into her arms.</p><p>You let her words wash over you, burying your aching face into her chest. She holds you close, pressing gentle kisses into your hair and running her hands over your back. It feels tender, and not just because you pushed yourself into a corner for however long.</p><p>You hold her tightly, trying to believe that you <em>are</em> safe here.<br/>
You don’t quite manage it.</p><p>You’re not getting back to sleep tonight.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>only thing I'm unhappy with is that a few words are supposed to be red (like the gif) but I can't figure out how to do it :/</p></blockquote></div></div>
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